Claim profile
1600–1699

The 17th century

Whose working lives fell in the 17th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.

Lived then

The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 17th century, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.

CountryAll🇫🇷 France🇩🇪 Germany🇬🇧 United Kingdom🇯🇵 Japan🇹🇷 Turkey🇳🇱 Netherlands🇪🇸 Spain🇮🇹 Italy🇸🇪 Sweden🇨🇳 China
FieldAllWritersPoliticiansHistorical FiguresArtistsAcademicsScientistsMusiciansReligious FiguresActorsModels
  1. 1KoxingaKoxinga1624–1662 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians10 decades
  2. 2Tokugawa IemitsuTokugawa Iemitsu1604–1651 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  3. 3Tokugawa HidetadaTokugawa Hidetada1579–1632 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  4. 4Tokugawa IenobuTokugawa Ienobu1662–1712 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  5. 5Yagyū MunenoriYagyū Munenori1571–1646 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  6. 6Tokugawa MitsukuniTokugawa Mitsukuni1628–1701 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  7. 7Tokugawa TadanagaTokugawa Tadanaga1606–1634 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politiciansnot measured—
  8. 8IMInoue Masashige1585–1661 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politicians0 decades
  9. 9KSKonoe Sakiko1575–1630 · 🇯🇵 Japan · Politiciansnot measured—

How this is measured

  • Placing people in time. Each person belongs to the century in which they were most active — around age 35, and never after their death.
  • Who ranks highest. Within a century, people are ranked where two independent signals agree: how many of the world’s Wikipedia language editions cover them, and how many people actually read about them. Article counts alone can be lifted by a person’s own circle; readers cannot.
  • Fame in print. The curves count how often a name appears in Google Books from 1800 to 2019, as a share of all the words printed each year, in the person’s own language wherever that corpus exists. Those decades are over, so each measurement is made once and kept.
  • What is left out. A lifetime is measured only from 1820, when there is enough print to judge; the five years after a death are skipped as obituaries; and a name shared with someone equally notable is credited to neither.